PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein said yes­ter­day there is a void in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty fol­low­ing the death of Sheik Lisha Ltd man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Churchill Azad Akaloo.

In an ad­dress at his fu­ner­al, Ho­sein hailed the hu­mil­i­ty of Akaloo, stat­ing that it in­formed how he ap­proached busi­ness.

“When you see the lev­el of his hu­mil­i­ty, you would nev­er be­lieve that he was one of the busi­ness mag­nates in the Caribbean. From a very small busi­ness, he was able to grow one of the largest in­dus­tries in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean,” said Ho­sein.

The Min­is­ter con­tin­ued, “When you look at the way in which he in­ter­act­ed with per­sons, you would un­der­stand why the prod­ucts that he cre­at­ed were af­ford­able, they were avail­able, and they were re­li­able, be­cause that is the in­di­vid­ual he was. He was al­ways avail­able to per­sons. “

Am­ri­ka Teelucks­ingh, who spoke as the CEO of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, sim­i­lar­ly praised Akaloo for plac­ing em­pha­sis on mak­ing prod­ucts af­ford­able.

“Ha­ji Akaloo un­der­stood the del­i­cate eco sys­tem of our food sup­ply chain. Even when glob­al mar­kets faced se­vere dis­rup­tions his fo­cus re­mained fixed on fair­ness, ser­vice and keep­ing ba­sic com­modi­ties ac­ces­si­ble to every­day cit­i­zens. That ap­proach earned him pro­found re­spect across our in­dus­try,” she said, not­ing that SATT had recog­nised him over the years, grant­i­ng him a life­time achieve­ment award as well as the Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty Award in 2018 and twice nam­ing Sheik Lisha win­ning dis­trib­u­tor of the year in 2018 and 2019.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness, Mar­i­ano Browne, al­so paid trib­ute to Akaloo at the fu­ner­al held un­der Mus­lim rites.

“In a sense he helped me to un­der­stand the com­mu­ni­ty and more im­por­tant­ly to un­der­stand that we were all one re­gard­less of our faith, re­gard­less of the re­li­gion, re­gard­less of our po­lit­i­cal par­ties. And in fact un­der his house every­body met and we didn’t meet as op­po­nents, we met as friends, we met as broth­ers be­cause that’s the way he lived his life,” said Browne.

Akaloo passed away on Fri­day evening. He was 82.

In his life­time he trans­formed the fam­i­ly owned busi­ness Sheik Lisha Ltd, found­ed in the 1950s, in­to one of the coun­try’s most promi­nent man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors.